In Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A), which is the next-generation cellular communication standard that is discussed in Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), introduction of technology called carrier aggregation (CA) has been studied. Carrier aggregation is technology that forms a communication channel between a user equipment (UE) and a base station (BS, or evolved Node B (eNB)) by aggregating a plurality of frequency bands that are supported in LTE, for example, and thereby improves communication throughput. Each frequency band included in one communication channel that is formed by the carrier aggregation is called a component carrier (CC). The bandwidths of frequency bands that are available in LTE are 1.4 MHz, 3.0 MHz, 5.0 MHz, 10 MHz, 15 MHz, and 20 MHz. Accordingly, if five bands of 20 MHz are aggregated as component carriers, a communication channel of 100 MHz in total can be formed.
Component carriers that are included in one communication channel in the carrier aggregation are not necessarily contiguous to one another in the frequency domain. The mode in which component carriers are arranged contiguous to one another in the frequency domain is called a contiguous mode. On the other hand, the mode in which component carriers are arranged not contiguous to one another is called a non-contiguous mode.
Further, in the carrier aggregation, the number of component carriers in an uplink and the number of component carriers in a downlink are not necessarily equal. The mode in which the number of component carriers in an uplink and the number of component carriers in a downlink are equal is called a symmetric mode. On the other hand, the mode in which the number of component carriers in an uplink and the number of component carriers in a downlink are not equal is called an asymmetric mode. For example, in the case of using two component carriers in an uplink and three component carriers in a downlink, it can be called asymmetric carrier aggregation.
Further, in LTE, any one of frequency division duplex (FDD) and time division duplex (TDD) can be used as duplex operation. Because the direction of a link (uplink or downlink) of each component carrier does not change in time in FDD, FDD is better suited to the carrier aggregation compared to TDD.
Meanwhile, a handover, which is a basic technique for achieving the mobility of a user equipment in the cellular communication standard, is one of the important subjects in LTE-A. In LTE, a user equipment measures the communication quality with a serving base station (a currently connected base station) and communication qualities with peripheral base stations and transmits a measurement report containing measurements to the serving base station. Receiving the measurement report, the serving base station determines whether a handover should be performed or not based on the measurements contained in the report. Then, if it is determined that a handover should be executed, a handover is carried out among a source base station (the serving base station before a handover), the user equipment, and a target base station (a serving base station after a handover) according to a prescribed procedure (e.g. Patent Literature 1 below).